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Experiments in Personal Religion: Study VII

Religious Experience through Crisis in Individual Growth and Social Experience
H. N. Wieman

Salvation Through Crisis

1. The Problem of the Crisis

A crisis is dangerous. It will make us or break us. Like a wave we must ride it to victory or be whelmed beneath its flood. One becomes suddenly ill in the midst of an important undertaking. It is a crisis. Out of such illness some men have risen to a great career; others have been dragged down to ruin. The son who has been carefully reared is discovered to have stolen money. It is a turning-point in the life of the family, leading to greater mutual understanding and co-operation, if rightly met, or leading to deeper disaster if wrongly treated. The investment which was to pay for the education of the children vanishes in the bankruptcy of a firm. It calls for a reorganization of life purposes and transformation of habits whereby powers and possibilities are brought to light that might have remained forever hidden; or else the family sinks and sinks. Someone dies under whose love and shelter we have lived. How shall we meet the crisis?

Crisis generally wears the face of disaster. But it is not disaster; it is opportunity, if we make it so. But it rests with us and the way we avail ourselves of God. It is the fateful moment when we must change our ways for good or ill. It is the turning-point whence paths diverge. It is the situation in which old habits no longer suffice to produce desired results. Either they produce no noticeable results at all, or very unexpected and undesired ones.

The chief thing to note about a crisis, from the standpoint of this section, is the fact that it requires a reorganization of our habits. Therein lies its peril and its promise. Our old ways of life are disrupted. We must seek out new ways. How shall we do it? The practical problem, which we always try to formulaie and solve in this section, is expressed in this last question. When old habits no longer work and we are forced to seek new ways, how shall we conduct ourselves in order to find the way of salvation and escape the way of ruin? How to meet a crisis. That is our problem.

2. How Not to Meet a Crisis

There are three wrong ways to meet a crisis. One is to fail to see it. The second is to see it and fear. The third is to be so custom bound and muscle ridden that we cannot change our ways and meet the strange new demands that are made upon us. Let us consider each of these in turn.

Often crises come and go, the backwash sweeping men off their feet, and the men never discover there is a crisis until they find themselves struggling in the wreckage and it is too late. They are so busy doing the little thing that is directly at hand. They do not take time, as every man occasionally should, to draw apart from the continuous succession of one little thing after another, and look deeply into the events of life, and fate abroad, and so be in a state of mind to catch the significance of a crisis when it begins to loom. They do not mount the watch tower of worship. It is easy to become so engrossed in the daily grind that we cannot see the crisis in its beginning. Again, some people are so blindly optimistic that they refuse to see anything which does not sustain them in what they happen at the time to want to do. Blindness to the fact of crisis is probably the most common fault and the most common reason why men are hurt instead of helped by critical situations when they arise. They simply do not see the need of reorganizing their lives and readjusting their habits. They are not alert; they are not sensitive to those changes which betoken the oncoming of a crisis. They may note the signs that indicate a change of weather, as Jesus said, but they do not observe the signs of the times. While Noah builds the ark they laugh him to scorn. So the flood comes and finds them unready.

The second wrong way to meet a crisis is in fear. Sometimes, strange though it may seem, fear is joined with blindness. If we are afraid the easiest way is to hide the head in the sand and ignore what is going on. Sometimes it is something else than the crisis which causes us to hide our eyes in fear and so remain in ignorance of the critical nature of the situation. Again, it may be some sign of the crisis which makes us shut our eyes to any further developments of it.

But this is not always the way fear affects men. It does not always make them shut their eyes to danger. But it has other effects just as harmful or worse. It is never the right way to meet a crisis. While it does not always blind, it probably always distorts the vision and prevents us from seeing things precisely as they are; and crisis is a time when, above all others, we must see things as they are. Fear confuses the mind and renders our thinking inaccurate; but crisis is a time when we must think profoundly, comprehensively, accurately, and swiftly. Fear disorganizes the will and prevents us from reaching a final conclusion and taking definite action. It is likely to throw us back into all sorts of wasteful and vacillating and futile practices just when we need most of all to conserve all our time and strength and resources. Next to blindness, fear is the worst thing that can befall us when we face a crisis. Possibly it is worse than blindness, at times.
 

But when we say that fear is the worst way to meet a crisis we must note a distinction. A crisis ought to stimulate us. It probably always
does when we face it and recognize it for what it is. This state of stimulation might be called a state of fear; that is, it is a state in which our latent powers are aroused, the action of heart and lungs quickened, the blood courses more rapidly through all the arteries, the total rate of metabolism is accelerated. But there is a vast difference between that state of stimulation in which we are given most complete command over all our powers and that state in which there is the stimulation of fear, but a stimulation that confuses and disorganizes the personality. It is this last which we condemn as the worst way to meet a crisis.

The third wrong way to meet a crisis is by persisting in old ways, refusing to modify and reorganize our habits, and, if need be, our total way of life. This may be due to stubbornness or conceit; it may be due to lack of plasticity in our habits, we being physically and mentally muscle bound and rigid; or it may be merely due to lack of imagination. But crisis requires change on our part, oftimes swift and radical change. Except ye turn and become as a little child ye have not the plasticity required to enter the Kingdom of Heaven by way of a crisis.

3. The Right Way

Knowledge of the three wrong ways to meet a crisis helps us to see what is the right way. Rightly to meet a crisis and ride it to victory we must be alert, fearless, and plastic. These three requirements should be stated a little more fully.

To be alert is to be sensitive to changing conditions, keenly aware of the dangers involved as well as of the other possibilities. Can we be sensitive to danger and possibilities of various kinds, surveying the situation in its fulness, face it squarely, feel the full stimulus of it, and yet be free of that fear that distorts the vision, confuses the thinking, and weakens the will? That is the test. These two things must be united if we are to master the crisis. We must face the issue squarely and unafraid.

Then we must be capable of changing our ways. The right thing to do in a crisis always requires some marked change in our manner of living; otherwise it would not be a crisis. Sometimes such a change requires great sacrifice. Also the good to be gained by means of the sacrifice may be problematical, depending on a venture which is by no means certain of its outcome. Furthermore this good to be gained, while it may be beneficial to others, may not be acceptable to us as a good except as we so change, our interests and ways of life as to share in the good of these others. Thus the crisis, demanding sacrifice by us, cannot be met without great capacity for transformation in our total personality and way of life.

To meet a crisis adequately, then, we must have clear vision with alertness and sensitivity; we must be fearless; and must have capacity for transforming the organization of our lives. The problem we have to solve is to discover how these three traits of personality can be acquired; for it is only by means of these that we can meet a crisis in the right way.

4. How to Achieve the Right Way

The way to be alert we have already suggested. It consists in drawing aside from the daily grind at regular intervals in order to survey in thought the total situation in which we live our lives. We must mount the watch tower and look around, figuratively speaking. To do this effectively we must relax and wait in quietness in some solitary place so that there can rise up into our mind any hidden thing which we have been experiencing but not noticing. For there are many things which enter the fringe of consciousness unnoticed, and sometimes these unnoticed bits of experience have tremendous significance for us and others. But we will never come to know them and their significance unless we take these times of quiet worshipful' waiting in which they have opportunity to rise into the focus of consciousness. Words and attitudes and expressions of the face in our associates have been saying something to us but we could not understand their meaning until the relaxation of these quiet minutes allows these experiences to enter our mind with their load of meaning. That is the reason we call this method of retirement a way of mounting the watch tower. It is a way of being alert and of cultivating alertness. If there is a crisis looming up before us, we will discover it quicker this way than in any other. If a crisis is already upon us and we have failed to note it, we will see it when we mount the watch tower.

But how can we rid ourselves of that demoralizing kind of fear which we described previously? This is one of the most important and most difficult things. Yet there is a sure way of overcoming fear. You cannot necessarily keep it from falling upon you; but when it comes you can find a cure that never fails if you learn the method of it. You can recover your self-command, restore ycur nerve, and regain clarity of vision. Fear will occasionally fall upon some of us inevitably, with all its demoralization, but the important thing is to know a method by which to escape from its clutches. We shall try to describe that method.

Stated very simply, the cure of fear is the practice of the presence of God. But that statement is hardly full enough to mean much to one who has never used the method.

One is free of demoralizing fear just as soon as he is ready to accept the facts precisely as they are. Fear of the demoralizing sort is the endeavor to make things seem to be different from what they truly are. It is shrinking, cowering, hiding, in spirit if not in body. That means trying to hide the facts out of sight and make them seem different. As long as one clings to the hope that things may be better than they seem he is subject to fear. There is record of a man who found he was going blind. As long as he clung to his failing eyesight he was fearful and depressed. But when at last he saw there was no hope, resigned himself to inevitable fact, and set to work to cultivate his sense of touch in order to become an expert flour-tester, his fear departed. The man who cannot face the likelihood of defeat and failure, but must keep these out of mind in order to sustain his courage, is still a coward. Cyrano de Bergerac said: "I have never fought with hope to win," meaning that his courage did not depend upon the hope to win. As soon as one is ready to accept the facts and commit himself completely to the course they indicate, surrendering himself to the keeping of reality, he can lift his head unafraid, alert and ready to make every possible use of circumstance, but never shrinking from reality, however grim it may appear.
Now this state of complete self-committal, this total self-surrender to reality, with consequent command over all the resources of personality, is possible when one fills his mind with the thought that underneath all other facts is the basic fact upon which all else depends. This basic fact can be called the structure of the universe or it can be called God. Whenever we commit ourselves in love to God, accepting him with affection and all things else for his sake, we are free of fear. This state of mind requires cultivation. We do ndt have it by nature, or, if we do, the conditions of civilization amid which we live have taken it from us. This state of mind must be cultivated in seasons of worship. The cultivation of this state of mind in which we feel ourselves sustained and moved by the basic fact of the world is what we mean by the practice of the presence of God. It casts out fear.

If in time of crisis one feels that he is losing his nerve, and the disorganizing chill of fear creeps over him, let him retire for a little time and be alone where he can recover this state of complete self-committal to reality for the love of God. If he has never practiced the presence of God in the manner described, he may not be able to do this. But if he has practiced it, he can in every time of need recover his poise. And becoming a master of himself, he can master circumstance. He can even master death in the sense of facing i- fearlessly and making it yield up whatsoever profit it can be made to yield to himself and his fellow-men. Many a godly man, and pre-eminently Jesus, has been able to make his own death serve him well for centuries after he was gone. We remember Latimer calling across to Ridley when the two were being burned to death for their religious faith: "Be of good cheer, Brother Ridley, for we shall this day by the grace of God light such a candle as shall never be put out." They did. Latimer turned that crisis to good account. He met it right.
The third requirement for meeting a crisis, we said, was plasticity. This is something which cannot be achieved at the last moment in the hour of need. It must be cultivated and preserved from childhood. If one has lost it he may be able to win it back by a long slow process; but it. is far better to keep it.

How can one preserve plasticity? By putting himself in the situation where he can feel awe and wonder and reverence; for awe and wonder and reverence are states of consciousness which indicate that one is reacting to something very different from the common matters of routine habit. Awe and wonder and reverence are the exact opposites of rigid routine. They constitute that precious childlike attitude which Jesus said was prerequisite to entering the Kingdom of Heaven. The reason they are prerequisite is very plain. It is because they represent in a man that plasticity which enables him to undergo transformation. Each man must seek out for himself those conditions which arouse in him the attitude of wonder, awe, and reverence. For it is these that represent in him that plasticity without which he cannot find the gateway into the Kingdom of Heaven which is opened before him by a crisis.